I have been exploring the possibilities of mis-using a sample player recently. Dave Hilowitz's excellent 'Decent Sampler' is, imho, not only much better than merely 'decent', but it has also allowed me to go slightly outside the usual territory of samples and to become an intrepid explorer. Huge thanks also to the team behind Pianobook.co.uk - a great contribution to the world of sampling, created by Christian Henson.
So here is a quick recap of the design thinking behind two of my recent releases on Pianobook.co.uk.
Parallel Inversions
'Parallel Inversions' was my first really developed idea that isn't just a sample replay. It deliberately breaks the rules to produce an 'alien' instrument. In a 5 star review, Michael Milburn said;
'I don’t understand what these are, but do enjoy the sounds.'
The user interface is the first thing that hits people with this virtual instrument. The top row of controls has 23 vertical faders that look a bit like the 'Mic' sliders that you see in many sample players - except that instead of 2 or 3, or maybe 5, or (extreme) 7 or higher, there are almost two dozen of them! They are split into four sections, and there are some subtleties in the way that these are put together.
The most important section is the one that has the 0 to 4 'Mic' sliders in it. The 'Zero' slider is set at about 75% in the default preset, so that you know it is important. This slider plays the 'fundamental' frequency that is played by Decent Sampler, or rather, it plays that frequency sometimes - the XML code that Decent Sampler uses to specify how samples are played allow all sorts of manipulations, and I'm exploiting this here. So the 'Zero' / '0' slider plays three different octaves, using a random 'Round Robin' assignment. So if you play a C3, then you will actually get a C3, or a C4, or a C5. The ratios are set asymmetrically, with the 'octave down' option half the probability of the others. So for every chord that you play, you may get that chord, or you may get a biased inversion of it instead (a 'bass-light' inversion). This isn't how many instruments work! (But it is an 'alien' instrument...)
The 1 to 4 Mic sliders are actually pitched in semitones up from the 0 (zero), which is why they are arranged in the staggered 'piano keyboard' arrangement. This is immediately obvious if you increase the '1' slider, because you get a C / C# discord! So the 0 to 4 section controls parallel pitches, which (again) isn't how many conventional instruments work - organ drawbars are a bit like this, but...).
The next section to the right is from 5 to 11, and again these are parallel semitones up from the 0 (zero) pitch. The '5' (fifth) slider is set at about 75% in the default preset so that you know it is important (just as with the 0 (zero) slider. So the default preset plays two sine waves, a firth apart, and in both cases, the pitches are inverted (or not) at random, with a preference for one octave up instead of down. All of the inverted pitches are slightly detuned relative to the fundamental pitch, which gives a more interesting tone. All of these 'Parallel & Inverted' sliders are centred in the stereo image.
The combination of fixed parallel intervals (the default 5th is just intended as a hint to get you started) and random inversions kind of breaks 'the rules', and gives this instrument an interesting and unusual character. Have fun breaking all those conventions that you are supposed to follow, and embrace performances that are never the same twice!
On the far left, there is a single '-12' slider, which was supposed to play a pitch one octave down from the fundamental. Unfortunately, I'm not the world's greatest programmer, and so it actually plays the same pitch as the '0' (zero) slider, except that the random inversions mean that most of the time it plays a different octave. Although Parallel inversions has had 3 versions, I have left this defect in there, because serendipitously, it sounds good.
The A to K sliders are different again. This time they are panned either hard left or hard right, and they are distorted sine waves, instead of the purity of 0 to 11 and -12. So the A to K sliders add timbre and broaden the stereo image. Again, this isn't how normal instruments tend to work, but...
Finally, the lower row has more 'synthesizer'-type controls than is normal, with a full ADSR 'envelope' control, and I recommend the 'Attack' control for giving gravitas, and the 'Decay' control (with 'Sustain' set to near zero) for adding a 'Radiophonic' or synthetic character that sounds like it is from the 1970s.
Straight Maths
'Straight Maths' has a busy user interface, but it extends some of the ideas in Parallel Inversions. The left hand side has 48 'Mic' sliders (yep, a lot!), whilst the right hand side has the extended 'synthesizer' controls, but in a more compact vertical format.
The three rows on the left are devoted to three different types of sound source.
S - Top Row - additive synthesis
The top row (S) is sine waves (with twists) to provide simple Fourier additive synthesis. The '0' (zero) slider is again set as a hint that it is the fundamental in the default preset, but it does tend to get lost with all the other sliders!
The three blocks of four Mic sliders on the top row have, from left to right:
- a Sine wave (0, 1 or 2 octaves up, shown as 0, 1 or 2), panned to the centre,
- a hollow-sounding, slightly square waveform (-), panned to the centre,
- a slightly bright, slightly sawtooth'y waveform (N (get it?)), panned to the centre, and
- a detuned stereo 'sweetener' sine waveform (s) that adds a bit of interest and broadens the stereo image. If you want, you can ignore the 's' sliders and add your own preferred chorus effect via VST or outboard...
Yes, there's a bug with the 'S' in the two octaves up section, but that's part of the charm of the user interface, and does not affect the tone!
The '-2' and '-1' mic sliders are sub-octave sine waves that can add low end to sounds. Use with care!
As with all additive synthesizers, you mix and match the sliders to give you the combination of harmonics that you want, and then use the ADSR controls to give the sound a bit of shape in time.
M - Middle Row - Karplus-Strong physical modelling
The second row has 16 different samples of metallic-sounding decaying sounds, derived from the Karplus-Strong hammered/plucked string physical model. '13' is my personal favourite, but it is way too strident for most purposes, and so just the merest hint of it is usually plenty! I resisted the temptation to arrange the sliders in any sort of order (previously I tried a 'tone-to-noise' arrangement), mainly because when I have tried to do this, I have rediscovered just how difficult it is to arrange multi-dimensional differences into a linear order. So I'm afraid that you will just need to play with the sliders until you get used to the sounds. Oh, and 10 and 11 ARE different, but not as different as I wanted!
The 16 sliders are all tuned slightly differently, and are all stereo. This means that you can use combinations to add harmonics and detuning
My preference is to use the middle row to add a little bit of metallic 'bite' to sounds that are mainly top-row additive at their core. You can completely ignore this and do your own thing, of course!
W- Lower Row - Risset physical modelling
This row mis-uses Risset's work on synthesizing drum sounds, and adapts it to producing 'woody' sounding fast-decaying thumps and clunks to add percussive starts to the higher row sounds. There are four sets of sounds, arranged with the left-most sound in each set being the thickest (three sounds at once) and the others just single sounds. The detuning is toned back for most of these samples. These sounds are in mono, centered in the stereo image. I did play with stereo samples, but at low frequencies there isn't much to gain. To show how self-contradictory I can be, my '9126 Sawtooths' instrument on Pianobook.co.uk has way too much stereo bass!
It is quite fascinating how just a brief 'blip' of woodiness at the start of a sound that is all sine waves can totally change the character and timbre that you perceive. (Oh, and too much reverb is always a good idea!) This low row is influenced by the clicks found in old tone-wheel organs (the idea of adding percussive starts is not 'new' in any way!) and by the rather novel use of samples of the starts of instruments that Roland used in their D-50 synthesizer to augment a simpler digital synthesis technique for the sustained sounds. Roland called this mix of samples and synthesis 'Linear Arithmetic', so 'Straight Maths' is my way of paying homage to a classic 'personal favourite' synthesizer from the 80s. Okay, so now you know where the name comes from!
As before, the lowest row is used to add a little extra bit of character to the sound. The default preset deliberately adds too much 'W' so that your first experience of 'Straight Maths' is 'Wow!'. Maybe that what the 'W' really stands for? But remember that subtlety is often the best approach, and too much 'W' may take you into cheesy territory...
Trivia
The rows were going to be labelled as: J, AK and C, for Joseph, Alexander, Kevin and Claude, but I thought this might be too obscure. What is interesting is that you now know a famous 'Kevin' - although Karplus still sounds uber-cool to me!
Letiti gave 'Straight Maths' a 5 star review, which is much appreciated, including this comment:
'One of the most innovative and unusual Pianobook entries'
For which I am enormously grateful!
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